Author
Topic: Newland - A progressive diary (Read 16568 times)

Back in 2007 I played Simutrans for a while and was very impressed with what had been accomplished at that point. I played for a while and then moved on to other games, often returning to SimCity to satisfy my city building/creating urge. SimCity, while great, never truly satisfied me as I found the traffic simulation aspect to be lacking and while the asthetics were pleasing, I grew bored with every attempt to create a city of any size.

Fast forward to mid August 2012 and I rediscover Simutrans. Having played the game before, the learning curve was much flatter this time and after some experimentation with some starter maps, I played a week-long game to really get my feet wet and hone a few transportation techniques. With that under my belt, I felt I was ready to take the adventure to the next level and create a huge map and make it mine.

I feel like I want to contribute to this fine game, but lacking any programming skills (I did a lot of programming in my youth, but that was 25 years ago using Turbo Pascal, I can read C++ a bit but cannot program in it... I fear the learning curve would be far too steep now to have any hope of contributing in this manner) and any artistic abilities, I decided that I would share with you a world creation journal, akin to what is often written about in SimCity, to show my appreciation for the insane amount of hours that the many programmers and artists have put in to this game over the years.

I started with a random map that I liked (with a size of 2048x1024) and began to make some modifications to it, mostly to divert all major water bodies to the main bodies and eventually to the "ocean" which I designated to be at the north centre of the map.

With that complete, I proceeded to individually lay down 237 cities. I changed a few names but mostly stuck with what was auto-generated by the computer (US city name set). City locations were selected to correspond with what I felt were strategically locations for cities. Top choices were: watercourses, rivers/lakes, especially areas where watercourses joined, flat low or mid altitude plains where farming would be possible and valleys where I deemed that a city had a reason to exist. I largely avoided cities on hillsides and at the top of mountains except for a few that I decided would become mining towns.

The next step was to establish a starting network of roads, circa 1930. My intention was to evolve the world as the years progressed, starting with a rudimentary dirt road network joining all cities. Rules were that no significant grades could be tackled in a short distance (roads up mountains had to wind slowly up) and no large bridges/spans (only wooden bridges would be used). This meant that larger bodies of water, of which this map had several, had to be circled around by roads and that the larger rivers were impassable by road vehicles (initially) and passenger traffic would have to be transported via ferries.

That completed, it was time to begin playing the game... [to be continued]

With an influx of Federal money, the province of Newland begin an ambitious program of connecting the many cities with a bus service. The many cities of the area had grown up around small rural operations, mostly farming and logging, and lacked any significant connections. It was decided that a bus service would be the first step to increasing mobility between the many economic regions of the area.

From April 1930 to June 1931, the Province of Newland acquired approximately 250 RVg KS-45 busses, many with the optional passenger trailer attachment for additional capacity. These busses were deplayed across the province and several hub areas were strategically selected to concentrate passenger traffic and transport it along the chain to their destinations. The intention was that once these bus lines were established and a baseline of passenger flow rates was established, train lines could be constructed to better facility passenger movement between the hub cities.

((Okay, this network feature has got to be the coolest thing added to this game recently, it blows my mind every time I open it! Kudos to all involved in its creation))

Transportation around and across the large lakes in the region posed a particular challenge. The crossing of the Fraser River was easily accomplished with the addition of a small passenger ferry across the river:

Other bodies of water posed a much more daunting task to cross. Lake Beautiful is over 600 km in length and with the rudimentary dirt roads at the time, transit from one side to the other, using the southern, accessible route, would take days to complete. The establishment of several ferry routes across the lake was integral to improving the network in the area. Winter on the lake posed a particular challenge to water transport as frequent ice flows down the lake, pushed by the wind, made crossing the lake perilous at times. A balance between performance and economics determined that the Freya was the appropriate vessel for the job.

With a basic bus and ferry network in place, it was then important to progress to the next stage: interconnecting hub cities with a rail network. Another infusion of Federal and Provincial money allowed the construction of a train service backbone to connect hub cities with one another. Funds were not sufficient to enable crossings of large water bodies and rivers so reliance on the ferry network was still integral to the success of the network.

By the end of 1936, construction was complete on approximately 10,000 km of track, employing 52 RVg 2-4-0 Runner steam engines and over 200 passenger compartments in tow.

While the initial track lying and train placement was impressive, locals were quickly frustrated by the lack of service actually provided by the network. Many citizens found themselves unable to secure travel on the train lines as wait lists for train travel tickets was often several months or even years in advance. Only the wealthy or connected were able to regularly use the lines, most others gave up and returned to old methods of transportation.

The Province of Newland approached the Federal government and after much negotiating, funds were made available for the purchase of additional trains and track lines (sidings and switches) to facilitate the transport of citizens between major hub cities.

10 additional RVg 2-3-1 Slim Line steam locomotives were purchased along with 70 more passenger compartments and deployed along strategic bottlenecks in the network. By summer of 1941, transportation reliability had improved but many areas were still underserviced. Citizens grew increasingly impatient and with a thundering response, the ruling political party was soundly defeated in the elections in the fall of 1941. The new government's primary mandate was to fix the transportation ills of the area and set things right. Little did they realize how monumental a task this would be.

By October 1947, Newland's new government were boasting about their success. The transportation network had been significantly improved and service, while still unreliable in some corners of the province, had generally improved for most users. The network boasted some impressive statistics:

273 busses71 trains11 ferries

Underlying the success of the new government's transportation improvements was the massive amount of borrowing necessary for the new infrastructure. $6 million in new equipment had been purchased in just 3 years and citizens were growing concerned that the network would be unable to make the returns necessary to pay for the aggressive expansion program.

Fortunately, ridership was increasing at a rapid rate and many trunk lines were becoming very profitable. In 1946, nearly 1.8 million riders utilized the provincial transportation network. The Ministry of Transport released preliminary figures boasting a nearly $5 million profit expected for 1947. Many criticized the figure as not capturing the true cost of the network, but few could argue that the network had at least become profitable and rider satisfaction was improving.

Still, the area had seen very little economic growth in the past 15 years and much blame was placed on the fledgling network's inability to serve the area aptly. There was much optimism that with many of the network's growing pains behind it that growth would return to the region.

[[Note: City growth was turned off for this scenario, I will manually grow the cities at a later date]]

Little did the Ministry of Transport realize at this point what the impact of the airplane would have on the region transportation infrastructure.

The introduction of the SAC Douglas DC-6 in 1947 changed the face of Newland Province forever. With such immense distances between the major cities of the area, train travel, while significantly improved over horse and bus travel, still took a considerable amount of time for connections. A trip from Fox Lake to Vancouver, some 1,000 km distant and representing a distance of roughly half of the distance across the province, would take the average rider over 30 hours with 7 separate transfers to complete. Take a train from Fox Lake to Excelsior, transfer to the train to Thermopolis, transfer to the train to Lakeshore, transfer to the train to Mcallen, transfer to the train to Paintsville, transfer to the train to North Vancouver, transfer to the ferry across to Coquitlam, then transfer to the train to Vancouver. It was an exhausting process and long distance travel was only attempted by those who truly needed to cross the distance.

It is 700 km from Fox Lake to Vancouver, as the crow flies. Even discounting the immense speed advantage of plane travel over train travel, planes enjoy a 30% distance reduction from a train travelling the same route. Add in the fact that the DC-6 could travel 8 times faster than the steam engines in use at the time and the trip from Fox Lake to Vancouver could be done in just over three hours with a transfer in Memphis. This changed everything. Airports were quickly established in core hub cities: Vancouver and Memphis were chosen as air hub cities for the western region and Fox Lake and Thermopolis where selected as regional hubs. Additional hubs were designated to be built once the network was stable and the Ministry acquired experience with air transportation networks.

Ridership immediately blossomed. More and more DC-6's were placed on order and delivered as fast as possible to cover the exploding demand for air travel. Suddenly far reaches of the province were not so far anymore. Business could be conducted much more easily. This was the economic growth engine that the region had been waiting for. Vancouver, a core business hub city, grew significantly:

By the end of 1950, 14 DC-6's were in service with regular flights to Fox Lake, Thermopolis, Memphis and Vancouver.

New airports were quickly planned and construction begun. Orders for an additional 9 DC-6's were placed in anticipation of increased air traffic. In 1950, 2.2 million riders used the Newland transportation network. By 1955, that number would increase to 2.7 million riders. Airports were added to the eastern part of the province in the hub cities of Lakeside, Meadville and Menlo Park and to the western cities of Tuba City and Madisonville.

Memphis quickly became a major air hub city. At times the runway was unable to keep up to the amount of air traffic in the area and plans had to be drafted to add a second runway to the airport. This helped reduce congestion for a while, but ever increasing air traffic quickly negated the benefit of the second runway. Clearly something else needed to be done.

The network was very profitable at this stage, making $10 million in 1955. The expectation was for these profits to be turned back in to infrastructure improvements and airport expansion. Fortunately for Newland, something was developed which solved both the airport congestion issue and the idle funds in their bank vaults: the Boeing 707.

Released in 1959, the Boeing 707 jetliner was nearly twice as fast as the DC-6 and could carry nearly twice as many passengers. This meant that the 707 was roughly three times as efficient as the DC-6 at moving passengers. For every one 707 flight it required three DC-6 flights to move the same amount of people. The Ministry quickly placed orders for 30 Boeing 707's and by the end of 1959 had replaced its entire fleet of DC-6's with Boeing 707's, to the tune of $30 million.

Airports were quickly relieved of the stress of too many airplanes to handle and expansion plans for many airports were put on hold or postponed indefinitely. The Memphis airport, once overloaded with air traffic, was now a much more relaxed place to take a flight, even if the number of passengers flowing through the airport continued to expand.

Passenger satisfiction improved spectactularly. Over 3.5 million passengers rode the network in 1960, profits were over $36 million and the region experienced explosive economic growth. The metropolis of Vancouver, which now included the cities of Coquitlam and Maple Ridge, had a combined population of over 75,000. New bridges across the Fraser River opened up to the north shore and eliminated the need for the Fraser River ferry which had served the crossing for 30 years. Air traffic continued to increase and service levels continued to improve. The Vancouver International Airport saw significant expansion and air travel become more and more efficient in the region.

New train loops were added to regions in the western part of the province, retiring many of the old busses off the lines.

Continued improvements in train and air transport vehicles would likely have an exponential effect on economic growth in the region. The Ministry's goal was 10 million passengers annually by the end of 1969 and a regional population of over 2 million. Aggressive targets, indeed, but with the confidence of a well planned transportation network, perhaps anything was possible!

This is very interesting and impressively detailed! Those new in-game network maps are quite something. Does each colour designate a different line? If so, can I ask why you have so many lines which travel only between one town and the next, rather than running through services?

Interesting to see that you've placed your cities with a preference for water. Simutrans Experimental is programmed to do this automatically on map generation -- though I think your manual placement is somewhat more realistic than the results Experimental gives with default settings, at least.

Experimental is on my list of to-do's after I finish this game I haven't tackled it yet.You are correct about the individual lines and individual colours. The reason I used single lines between most destinations or small train routes was because I wanted to emulate short-haul bus lines in the early years and give myself something to grow in to for future years. The other benefit was to reduce early passenger traffic on such a huge map by reducing the distance that passengers would be able to travel due to their transfer/hop limitation (set to 7 for this map). Now that the major air routes are established, the next goal is to streamline that very process. Stay tuned!

By the end of 1964, the Ministry of Transportation's goals were well on their way to being accomplished. An influx of people from other areas ballooned the population of the province to close to 1 million citizens (843,000). The metropolis of Vancouver saw the bulk of the increase, boasting a population of over 400,000.

The resort town of Cedar Point experienced significant growth as well, feeding the tourism needs of the large city to the north. Many wealthier residents of Vancouver had a second home by the water on the lake. Cedar Point was now served by regular flights from Vancouver International Airport as well as regular train service to all connecting nearby and more distant larger towns.

In a short four years, the network had matured considerably. Major train corridors were upgraded to double track service and extra trains placed on the lines to serve the growing population. This also helped reduce the stress on the air network. Many bus routes serving small towns were replaced with rural passenger train service.

The busiest train routes were the Potsdam-Thermopolis-Vancouver and Meadville-Spring City-Vancouver lines.

The farming district of Plant City/Selden/Linn grew at a phenomenal rate, taking advantage of the rich soils present in this area.

Located on the main line between Cedar Point and Vancouver, it was well served by the trunk line as well as the newest addition to Newland province: the inter-province highway system.

Another ambitous project, this highway system's first leg was from Mission, a suburb of Vancouver, to Plant City, located south of the big metropolis. Intended to move large volumes of vehicles and reduce traffic congestion, it was scheduled to reach Cedar Point by the end of 1964. A further expansion of the highway system was planned to be completed by 1966. Construction began in earnest. The landscape would be forever changed, again.

((Okay, this network feature has got to be the coolest thing added to this game recently, it blows my mind every time I open it! Kudos to all involved in its creation))

I extrapolate this part to greet community and say I seldom can actually follow the forum due to work engagement, but I'm always glad when I log in and listen people appreciate the huge amount of hours I spent to begin the integration of network tool in simutrans, and (I'm sure) even more hours prissi spent to refine everything and publish in standard releases.

That said, fantastic thread, one of the best ones I never read here. Your map is impressive and if you persist will be a really LONG challenge; and your narration is really datailed, so please keep narrating about your experience. I'm really curious about development of your game and mostly your sensations

Yes, that farmland is beautiful. Would be lovely to see areas like that spawning by default on map creation. (I assume that isn't the case here?)

Correct. All done by hand, one tile at a time. I built a couple of farms like that and really liked the look, so I expanded that area to see what it would look like over a wider zone. I dropped a couple of factory farms in the middle and am going to play with that model and see if I like it... take the grain to a train yard and transport it to the mill(s).

I might get artistic (within the scope of my limited abilities) and create some different types of 2-season farmland to simulate the impact of the seasons on the growth cycle. And then I will build much larger tracts of farmland. And then I just need the ability to drag a section to drop multiple farms instead of plopping them individually

They're in the industry list at the top, mostly corn fields in various stages of growth. Make sure you turn off city growth, if you haven't already, otherwise they'll all turn in to factories over a period of time

Spent some time today (well, actually, a lot of time) learning how to create .pak files and made three new farm types which I have added to my farming district. Each type has both a N/S and E/W design and so far the vineyard/arbour has a winter version for each direction. I'll develop a winter version for the other two types tomorrow hopefully. Once I'm entirely happy with the final design I'll submit for the Pak128 team (and any other 128 team that wants it as well).

I made a regular field, a pumpkin patch and a grape vineyard. I put a lot of effort in to reducing the grid effect that the tiles would create when placed next to each other, smoothing out the edges so that they flowed fairly well. Not entirely happy with the finished product, but getting closer.

I've created several more farms and have updated/upgraded my entire farming district to use them. They all have a NE/SW rotation and a snow covered version. There is still some minor tweaking that I want to do, as well as I made changes to my previous farm designs as well. My corn field is looking a bit too sterile, I think I will upgrade it a bit and my plowed field is a bit too lightly coloured.

Sorry about the huge image size, wanted to capture as much as I could as a decent resolution.

Now that I have a nice group of farms prepared, I can go back to continuing to build Newland and advance the storyline some more.

The interprovincial highway system was a massive undertaking. Thousands of kilometres of freeway were built, reaching all corners of the province.

While traffic flows were expected to be moderate in most areas, some high traffic areas, such as the I-80/I-51 Interchange north of North Vancouver, required complex designs in order to move traffic efficiently. (this was my attempt at a turbine interchange design)

By mid-1965, the interprovincial highway system stretched from the southern border, through Cedar Point, Vancouver and stretched north to the ocean. I-80 stretched east-west from Potsdam to the Fraser River. An ambitious bridge was in the design stages to cross the mighty river near the ocean and reach the opposite shore. While this would speed up travel time considerably, there was a large amount of backlash from the tourist towns that operated the ferries across Lake Beautiful. Hadley, in particular, was full of protests. "Save our Ferries, Save our Jobs" was the mantra of the locals, desperate to save the tourist dollars which flooded ashore each summer from the crowded ferry to White Rock. With the construction of the I-80 bridge to the north, traffic would bypass their idyllic lake-side town and tourism would plummet.

The Ministry of Transportation pressed forward with the bridge design irregardless and completion was slated for 1968, the same year that the bulk of the interprovincial highway system would be completed. Certain legs would not be completed by this point, as they were more expensive/complicated, but by 1970, almost all highways were slated for completion.

By February 1966, much of the interprovincial highway system had been completed. Several expressways were built across the region, connecting far away cities and towns to each other and significantly reducing travel times for road passengers and freight.

Only a few highways remained to be built, all slated for construction in the next year. I-20, the southern highway, and I-93 were the largest projects. I-93 was presented with challenging terrain to cross and would require a considerable investment to see it through completion.

The area population was approximately 1 million citizens at this point. The urban area of Vancouver had grown but much of the rural areas had seen little growth up to this point. It was hoped that the interprovincial highway system would generate an increase in activity in these small towns and increase the area's population.

If they are coded as low level (1-3) industrial buildings those pillaging areas may even from automatically during city growth. The reason is the clustering of industrial building (which is stronger than com or res).

Linaril

I extrapolate this part to greet community and say I seldom can actually follow the forum due to work engagement, but I'm always glad when I log in and listen people appreciate the huge amount of hours I spent to begin the integration of network tool in simutrans, and (I'm sure) even more hours prissi spent to refine everything and publish in standard releases.

That said, fantastic thread, one of the best ones I never read here. Your map is impressive and if you persist will be a really LONG challenge; and your narration is really datailed, so please keep narrating about your experience. I'm really curious about development of your game and mostly your sensations

I still don´t get it how you made that map. I´m useing Simutrans 111,2 r5432 and everything i found was a feature at minimap which ploted only one line at time. How can i possibly make a map as you did?